This invention relates generally to insect repelling devices and, more particularly, to a belt to be worn about the waist of an outdoorsman that traps ticks on an adhesive surface positioned in a V-shaped gap area so as to prevent ticks from lodging in the skin of the outdoorsman.
In certain parts of the country, it is common for a hunter or outdoorsman to experience a tick having crawled onto his skin and taken up residence. A tick is a small arachnid that survives by feeding on the blood of mammals. While ticks are most common lodged in the skin of dogs and similar animals, ticks also crawl their way onto a human when they have opportunity to do so and bite tightly into his skin whereby to access blood. Without making a thorough inspection of one's body after walking through a tick-rich wooded or brushy area, one or more ticks may be hosted by a person's body for hours or even days. As ticks may carry Lyme disease or other diseases, preventing ticks from reaching their desired location is of great importance.
In the past, pesticides and repellants have been used to discourage ticks from crawling onto a person. Encouraging outdoorsmen to wear long pants tucked into socks and tight rubber boots is also discouraging to ticks. Although presumably effective for their intended purposes, the existing devices and proposals have not been effective to actually immobilize and kill a tick or similar arachnid that is actively crawling upwardly on the pants or other garment of an outdoorsman.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a tick trap belt which traps and kills ticks that are crawling on the pants of an outdoorsman. Further, it would be desirable to have a tick trap belt that is easy to attach and wear about the waist of an outdoorsman, especially when the user anticipates walking through a brushy or grassy area likely to have ticks. In addition, it would be desirable to have a tick trap belt having an awning or cover extending away from the belt that includes an adhesive strip in a gap area for the purpose of trapping ticks that crawl onto the adhesive strip.